Category : Blog

Singapore, Japan, and South Korea remain the most ambitious in the world when it comes to broadband services, according to a new study from the Economist Intelligence Unit.

Now in its third edition, the government broadband report shows that East Asian governments are targeting faster services and greater coverage than other countries. Already considered some of the most advanced broadband economies in the world, all three will significantly extend their lead if they meet targets.

Each has an official plan to provide 1Gbps services within the next two to five years, and both Singapore and Japan aim to cover more than 90% of households with these services over that time frame.

“In Europe, governments have been focused on addressing regional and rural areas the private sector would struggle to serve profitably,” says Iain Morris, editor of the report. “As a result, target speeds tend to range from 20Mbps to 50Mbps for between 75% and 90% of households.”

Northern countries, including Estonia, Finland and Sweden, are typically more aggressive, targeting speeds of 100Mbps for between 90% and 100% of households within the next five to 10 years.

Approaches vary in other parts of the world, although higher levels of public-sector funding per household covered generally correspond to more government intervention.

Australia is spending the most in public-sector funds per household covered of any country in the world, with a government plan to create, own and operate an ultra-fast network in almost all parts of the country.

In the US and Canada, governments are mainly focused on reducing the so-called “digital divide” by funding network rollout in rural areas.

UK-based BT Group PLC (LSE: BT.A) has announced the commercial launch of broadband services over its fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) network. Initial speeds will be up to 110 Mbps downstream and 30 Mbps upstream, but speeds will be increased to 300 Mbps in 2012, the company promised.

The operator's Openreach access network division, which provides wholesale services to retail ISPs (including sister division BT Retail), said that the first six exchange locations to be enabled by the end of October would be Ashford in Middlesex, Bradwell Abbey in Milton Keynes, Highams Park in North London, Chester South, St Austell, and York.

BT is spending £2.5 billion (US$3.9 billion) on what it calls "superfast" broadband, although the majority (roughly three-quarters) of its rollout is fiber-to-the-cabinet (FTTC), which still relies on copper for the final few hundred meters from street cabinets to homes. So far, the operator has passed more than 5 million premises with FTTC, and is making the service available at a rate of tens of thousands of new homes every week.

BT has some good news for its FTTC customers too: It now has approval from the relevant authorities to use new frequencies for VDSL that will enable it to roughly double the speeds delivered. As a result, FTTC downstream speeds will increase from up to 40 Mbps to up to 80 Mbps.

Openreach chief executive Liv Garfield said, "All our fiber products are fit for the future and these developments show that to be the case. As always, we want to go further and faster and so our journey doesn’t end here. We can turn up the dial should there be demand and so we can look to the future with confidence."

The firm is already testing 1-Gbps speeds on its FTTP test bed at Kesgrave in Suffolk, near its R&D center in Martlesham Heath (see "BT to trial gigabit FTTP broadband").

Moscow City Telephone Network (MGTS, a part of MTS) will transfer 42,000 owners of shared telephone lines to individual communication lines based on GPON technology by the end of 2011 at no charge, that will make digital communication services available to these subscribers. The Company also holds a tender for subscriber equipment suppliers.

400,000 subscribers will be transferred to GPON (Gigabit-capable Passive Optical Networks) technology – this is the number of households to be covered by the projected digital network according to the network capacity plan and introduction to the commercial market by 2012.

All transferred subscribers will receive an individual digital telephone line, access to IPTV and high-speed Internet. In the future the optical communication channels will provide access to new MGTS services such as high definition television (HDTV), video monitoring, fire protection, video calls and other interactive services. GPON model involves installation of the port to provide the above listed in the subscriber’s apartment. MGTS has not chosen the equipment supplier yet, the tender is open.

Colombia’s ICT Ministry announced that four firms have submitted bid proposals for the country’s National Fiber Optic Project. The Temporary Union Colombian Fiber Optic (which comprises the firms total play and TV Azteca), Telmex Colombia SA, Temporary Union Connectivity for All (Media Commerce Partners, ZTE Corp. Colombia branch, EXICOM INC, and ANDITEL SA) and Temporary Union Telefonica (Colombia Telecommunications SA and Telefonica Mobiles) will compete to win a place on the project, which will aim to expand Colombia’s fiber footprint to at least 400 new municipalities.

The ICT Ministry expects to award contracts for the project beginning November 4.

The Colombian Government plans to allocate $415,837 million COP (US $218 million) for the public-private partnership. The fiber-optic network expansion project aims to expand the number of broadband connections from the present 2.2 million to 8.8 million by 2014. Fiber-based broadband currently is available in 325 municipalities, according to the ministry.

The National Fiber Optic Project, managed by the Social Program Compartel of the ICT Ministry, is expected to take 30 months to complete, with an initial goal that at least 120 municipalities will receive new fiber-optic service by the end of next year.

Fitch Ratings is applying some reality to European Commission targets for fiber deployment, claiming the goal of 50% penetration of 100Mbps services by 2020 is simply unviable.

The ratings agency states fiber access will likely only be feasible for private firms setting up in densely populated areas, due to lower cost-per-user and predicted higher take-up of high-speed services in those areas. It notes several incumbent telcos are already spending €1 billion to €2 billion each to deploy fiber in heavy population centers to combat growing competition from cable operators, but claims the EC’s goals will require at least three times the investment.

Fitch estimates the total cost of deploying fiber to the home throughout France and Germany at €30 billion and €40 billion respectively. In addition, it believes the EU is being optimistic in expecting an injection of €6.4 billion of public cash to generate up to €100 billion of investment from the private sector, given current market conditions.

“It implies a leverage of over 15-times in a sector where there remain serious doubts about take-up rates and whether customers will pay substantially more for a faster broadband service,” a statement reveals.

Heaping more misery on European plans, Fitch notes that even if the €100 billion figure is achieved, it will still fall short of the total required investment.

The ratings agency also notes that consultations into cutting copper access prices, which were opened by Digital Agenda commissioner Neelie Kroes on Monday, fail to look at the bigger picture of increased pressure on telco’s top lines. The firm predicts operator’s revenues will fall in 2012 and then remain flat in 2013, and continued pressure on operating margins.

by Lightwave Staff

September 28, 2011

Communication networks and service provider Unite Private Networks, LLC (UPN) says it plans to build a fiber-optic network throughout Caroline County, VA. The network deployment will provide UPN infrastructure along the I-95 corridor between Richmond, VA, and Washington, DC. UPN recently signed a long-term contract to provide fiber-optic wide area network (WAN) services to the Caroline County School District.

UPN provides high-bandwidth, fiber-based communications networks to schools, government, carriers, data centers, hospitals, and enterprise business customers. UPN currently has customers located in 19 states throughout the US.

“UPN was very thorough and understood our bandwidth needs from the beginning,” said Wade Murray, IT Director for Caroline County Schools. “We were very surprised to find a vendor out there who was willing to build us a network capable of growing with us for decades to come. We put them through the ringer with calls to current customers and asking very pointed questions throughout the evaluation period. They were a hands-down clear choice when the long-term economics were realized.”

“Bandwidth is now the third utility behind power and water,” said Rob Oyler, UPN’s chief marketing officer and executive vice president of sales. “With a UPN provided WAN, schools can lock-in a long term fixed price for virtually unlimited bandwidth. When districts understand the power of this model they quickly wonder why they didn’t sign up with us years ago. No incumbent provider will offer them the flexibility and growth potential of a UPN provided WAN, period.”

UK broadband providers may claim to offer high broadband speeds, but the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) and Committee of Advertising Practice (CAP) wants to ensure that the country's service providers are actually practicing what they preach.
To ensure consumers are getting what they pay for from their respective service provider, the UK advertising watchdog will publish new ISP advertising rules that are set on how broadband providers promote "unlimited" broadband service.
In January, the ASA/CAP's Code Policy Team began developing "options" that would ban ISPs from claiming "unlimited" usage and allowing them to promote the peak "up to" speeds that only 50 percent of their customer base that are eligible to get at their home or business.
According to a report in The Independent, it appears that the authority has decided to use what is called "Option B" for the first element of its proposed broadband speed guidelines.
Under Option B, a service provider's "advertised speeds must be available to at least 10% of users." Up until now, ISPs would only promote the fastest theoretical speed depending on what flavor of DSL the service is being delivered over.
And while it would be ideal to have these controls apply to emerging Fiber to the Premises (FTTP)-based services being delivered by BT (NYSE: BT) and others, the new price regulations will initially only apply to legacy copper ADSL and ADSL2+ based services.

UK providers not delivering on what they promise has been a major issue in the country's broadband market and the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) and Committee of Advertising Practice (CAP) aren't the only ones calling for UK providers to be honest about their speeds.
In July, research conducted by UK telecom regulator Ofcom revealed that about 97 percent of the nation's broadband users are actually getting speeds much lower than advertised.

By Hartwig Tauber, Director General of the FTTH Council Europ

Our television viewing habits are changing. The days when the family gathered in one room around a tiny TV set with a very limited choice of broadcast channels are over. Now there is a huge amount of content to choose from, and each family member wants to choose exactly how and when to watch it. As consumers, we want to watch our favourite shows at any time, in different places, and on different devices. No wonder that on-demand and catch-up services such as Apple TV, BBC iPlayer and Netflix are becoming ever more popular.

Video is already the dominant form of traffic on the internet, according to one study. As high-definition (HD) becomes the prevailing video format, and more devices are manufactured with an Internet connection, the capacity required for entertainment services will continue to grow. On top of this, many next-generation services will depend on video communication, for example, between doctors and patients in rural areas, or students taking university study courses at a distance. Clearly, video has a big future, and looks set to be vitally important to our future wellbeing.

Unfortunately, the networks capable of supporting our new viewing habits are not in place. A cost-effective, future proof solution is required, and that means fibre-to-the-home (FTTH). Only FTTH offers the capacity, flexibility and reliability needed to support exciting, new content-based business models and services.

Read the opinion article: Fibre to the TV>

The FTTH Council Europe has created some videos to explain the importance of FTTH in our lifes.

Their  "Creating a brighter future" clip focuses on the purpose and the impact of Fibre to the Home in everyday life. The FTTH Conference clips will give you a good idea of what the largest FTTH event in the world is all about.

The video is available in French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Polish and Spanish, as well as English.

View or download the video clip>

China International Optoelectronic Expo (CIOE) held its 13th annual conference in Shenzhen, China; the FTTH/ODN/OTN China Conference (FOOCC) ran concurrently. Previously called the China Lightwave Conference, the FOOCC has broadened it focus beyond FTTH to include optical distribution networks and optical transport networks.

China's service providers will have substantial fiber networks under management with millions of fibers and many millions of ONU/ONT devices sitting at customer premises. China Telecom is building an FTTH network that will reach 100 million homes by 2014. Within Shanghai, a city of 23 million people, Shanghai Telecom will pass 50% of the city's 9 million households by year-end 2011 and 100% by year-end 2012.

The focus of service providers and equipment vendors is shifting from debates around PON technologies to lowering the costs of fiber deployment and long-term fiber network management. China's service providers are developing internal standards for ODN but open, shared standards are unlikely to emerge.

The EPON-versus-GPON debate misses the point; China is deploying both.

In earlier conferences, communications chip companies presented respective views on GPON versus EPON. The panel discussions at this year’s conference were intense and the audience hung on every word in a presentation from Wang Bo, Business Manager of the Technology Department of China Telecom, in which he discussed PON specifications, testing of EPON and GPON, and the subsequent results. While his presentation was central to the conference, his topics included not just EPON, GPON, and 10G PON but also installation and remote management of CPE (customer premise equipment).

Both EPON and GPON are being deployed in China. EPON OLT port shipments for China represented more than 60% of all PON OLT ports for China's consumption in the first and second quarters of this year. Initial China Telecom provincial FTTx network rollouts began with EPON and are continuing with EPON, while newer FTTx networks are beginning with GPON.

10G EPON deployments have begun in several provinces in China. According to Wang Bo, XG-PON (10G GPON) is behind 10G EPON in maturity and interoperability; however, we expect to see XG-PON deployments in the future. Bottom line, China will deploy both flavors of 10G PON over time.

FTTx networks need optical layer management solutions.

Service providers want to avoid traffic disruptions on their FTTx networks and they also need to lower network deployment and maintenance expenses. To facilitate this, PON equipment vendors and service providers are working on solutions that embed OTDR (optical time-domain reflectometer) diagnostics and reporting data into both central office and CPE, thereby improving the quality of network installations and ongoing network management.

Broadcom's FOOCC presentation included a discussion of the shared wavelength OTDR for PON and the need for the PON component ecosystem to embed optical layer management features. Ideally, the embedded OTDR management and diagnostic functions would be standardized across the PON MAC SoC vendors and equipment vendors. With standardization, consistent optical layer monitoring and management would be possible even when an FTTx network has equipment from multiple vendors.

China Telecom presented general requirements for embedded OTDRs in PON equipment. The embedded OTDR should be applicable to all types of PON technologies and across all speeds, without impacting normal service.

The costs of PON equipment continue to decline rapidly. China Unicom stated that the costs for PON equipment, OLT ports and ONUs/ONTs, account for less than 10% of the total FTTx network build. Consequently, service providers are seeking ways to lower installation costs, such as the cost of bringing up the ONT at the subscriber's home. China Telecom is exploring user card identification based on an integrated terminal management system (ITMS). China Telecom’s ITMS enables “zero-touch” whereby the ONT is brought online without the need for an on-site technician.

China Telecom developed 14 internal standards for ODN in 2010, covering zero-touch installation, intelligent ODN, and centralized installation procedures. When Ovum asked the panel of service providers and vendors if industry standards for ODN will emerge, the overall response was "unlikely." Every service provider has its own understanding of ODN and related innovations. Sometimes the innovation is at the provincial/city level based on localized network history and habits.

The bottom line is that ODN planning and standards are proprietary. We will see best practices but the emergence of worldwide standards is unlikely.